Event
- Event ID
- 119
- Quality
- Description
At an off-site liquid hydrogen fill station, a LH2 trailer hit a compressed hydrogen purge shut-off valve handle. The tubing attached to the purge valve was bent on both ends but did not leak.
- Event Initiating system
- Classification of the physical effects
- No Hydrogen Release
- Nature of the consequences
- Macro-region
- North America
- Country
- United States
- Date
- -
- Component involved
- valve (generic)
- Failure mode
- damage, no release
- Initiating cause
- impact, rollover, crash
- Root CAUSE analysis
The INITIATING CAUSE was a small collision causing a damage to a valve.
The ROOT CAUSE was the fact that the driver was not sufficiently careful in approaching the LH2 system fill point.
- Root causes
- Date entry in HIAD
- 20/01/2025
Facility
- Application
- Hydrogen transport and distribution
- Sub-application
- LH2 tanker
- Hydrogen supply chain stage
- All components affected
GH2 purge shut-off valve
- Process temperature range [C]
- cryogenic temperature (below -50°C)
- Process pressure range [MPa]
- low to medium pressure (below 2 MPa)
- Location type
- Open
- Location
- industrial area
- Operational condition
Emergency & Consequences
- Number of fatalities
- 0
- Number of injured persons
- 0
Lesson Learnt
- Lesson Learnt
An operative procedure should consider the risk of collision and prohibit the backing the truck into position.
Physical barriers are required, to protect the pipes from damages, such as the ones coming from collisions.
In-depth data
- Release type
- no release
- Released amount (kg)
- 0
- Probable IGNITION SOURCE
References
- Sources categories
- ORDIN
- Reference & weblink
Mishap no 18 in
P. L. Ordin, Review of hydrogen accidents and incidents in NASA operations, 1974, NASA TM X-71565
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19740020344Hankinson and Lowesmith, Qualitative Risk Assessment of Hydrogen Liquefaction, Storage and Transportation, FCH JU project IDEALHY, Deliverable 3.10 (2013)
confidential
(accessed October 2025)The summary of the IDEALHY analysis has been published in:
Lowesmith et al., Safety issues of the liquefaction, storage and transportation of liquid hydrogen: An analysis of incidents and HAZIDS, Int. J. Hydrogen energy (2014) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhydene.2014.08.002
